[SOLVED] Dual-boot or multi-boot of Linux Lite (and others) with Windows 7

[gold_finger]

It's clear from your post that you've done your research well.  You've got a good basic understanding of what needs to be done.

Despite computer having a Windows recovery partition, it's a good idea to make a set of recovery dvd's or a recovery usb for Windows.  (There should be a built-in program allowing you to create that.  Do a search for "recovery" from Start menu button if necessary.)  If hard drive itself dies, the recovery partition won't do you any good.  If MBR gets messed-up by either Linux or EasyBCD, the recovery dvd's/usb will make repairing it easy to do.

As far as I know, if you want to keep Windows MBR in tact you need to use EasyBCD for adding Linux distros to boot menu.  I haven't used that in years myself, but believe it's relatively easy to add more than one Linux distro.  I'm guessing that you can either add boot choices to it one at a time (as you add Linux distros), or add all at once if you install all Linux distros one after the other before running EasyBCD.  Don't think it's a problem either way.  When using EasyBCD, install each Linux distro's grub to their respective Root partitions.  None of them should be directed to the MBR (/dev/sda).

If you choose to have Linux's grub boot loader take over booting, you are correct that best way is to install Linux Lite's grub to the MBR (/dev/sda) and have all other distros install theirs to their respective Root partitions.  After adding other distro(s), just boot into LL and run "sudo update-grub" to have their entries added to the boot menu.

Creating an NTFS formatted data partition (to be used by all Linux distros  and Windows) ahead of time is a good idea and will not add any complications to your Linux installations.

You shrunk Windows and made space for the Linux distros -- good.  However, it's best to just leave the resulting free space un-used and un-partitioned and do the partitioning for Linux distros with a Linux tool like GParted.  So, boot into Windows and delete both /dev/sda5 (logical partition) and /dev/sda3 (extended partition) before you get started with Linux installs.  Then reboot into Windows one time to let it adjust to new disk format.  (Not sure if that's necessary, but can't hurt.)


From here on out, I'm just going to outline what I would do in your situation.  (There's no one right way to proceed, so feel free to make any adjustments you want to suit your needs.)

1.  Make partitions ahead of time for various Linux distros and the shared data partition.  To do that, boot from LL dvd/usb and open the GParted program.  (Menu -> System -> GParted, or Partition Drives.)

• Make one large "Extended" partition covering all of the free space on drive.
  
• Rest of partitions listed below will be "Logical" partitions within the extended partition.
  
• Make one "Ext4" Root partition (20-25GB) for each distro.  (To make later identification easier, label each partition.  Eg. "LinuxLite", "Mint", etc. -- without quotes and don't have spaces in the names.)
  
• Since you'll be saving data to separate shared partition, I wouldn't bother making Home partitions for the distros.  (If you want to do that, feel free but they won't need to be any bigger than 1-3GBs.)
  
• Make one Swap partition that will be shared/used by all distros.  If you plan to use hibernation, make Swap => 8192MiB.  If not, you should be fine with size = 2048MiB or so.
  
• Make shared data partition covering the remaining space in extended partition.  Format it as NTFS.  (It's not required that you make this partition ahead of time -- just easier than adding it later.)
  

2.  Install each distro using the manual install method. ("Something else" install choice for LL and Mint; not sure what PCLinux will call it.)  For each distro:

• Use the same "username" on each distro so you don't run into any permission problems on shared files.
  
• Set the Root mount point ("/") on it's designatated partition.
  
• If installer allows, manually type-in and set a mount point (eg. "/mnt/DATA") for the shared data partition.  (Use same mount point in all your distros so it's easy to remember.)  Setting up data partition can be done after installation too, so don't worry if you forget to do it or can't figure out how during install.
  
• For LL and Mint, no need to specify anything for the Swap partition during install.  Not sure about PCLinux.  If it wants you to select and format the Swap partition, that's fine.  That won't negatively affect anything when Swap gets used by other distros.
  

3.  Add each distro to boot menu choices.

• For EasyBCD, find and follow instructions to add new distro choice.  (I don't know procedure myself.)
  
• If Linux Lite's grub is in charge of booting, just boot into LL after installing another distro and run this command in a terminal to add the boot choice:
  

Code:

sudo update-grub

4.  Setup DATA partition for use with all operating systems.

• If you did not set DATA partition during install, follow this tutorial to do it after install.
  
• In the Linux distros, ownership of the mount point will probably be set to Root initially.  You'll need to change that so your user is the owner.  Open a terminal and enter this command to take ownership of the mount point.  (Substitute your real username in place of "username" in the command.  And change "/mnt/DATA" to your mount point if that is not what you used.)
  

Code:

sudo chown -R username: /mnt/DATA

• Open file manager and navigate to the data partition.  (You can do this in any Linux distro, or from Windows.)
  
• Create the folders you want to use for data files.  Eg. Documents, Downloads, Music, etc.
  
• Create symlinks from the DATA partition folders to your Home in each Linux distro.  You'll need to boot into each distro one-by-one and perform same basic steps:
  
• Navigate to Home folder and delete all current folders except the "Desktop" folder.
  
• Create symlinks from the DATA partition folders to your Home.  (Embarrassed to say that I don't know how to use GUI method for this, so can only give you command line method.)  Open a terminal.  You can enter a separate command for each folder that you want to link to Home using format like this:
  

Code:

ln -s /mnt/DATA/Documents /home/username

• Or, you can create all of the symlinks at once with a command like this:
  

Code:

ln -s /mnt/DATA/{Documents,Downloads,Music,Pictures,Videos} /home/username

• Just make sure that the folder names in the command are spelled out exactly as you made them on the DATA partition.
  
  
  
• When you're done with symlinks, you will now see those folders when you open your Home in the file manager and when you save things to them the data will end up on the DATA partition and be useable by all operation systems.
  
• I don't know Windows procedure for creating symlinks from DATA partition to Home, but Window 7 forum likely has answer to that.  Or you can just navigate to "D: drive" and save things in the folders that way.
  

P.s.
I don't think legacy grub in PCLinux will cause any problems with EasyBCD or if you decide to have LL's grub2 in charge of booting.